STO has mad me come around half way on the Klingons, but what they did really can't be reconciled with the show.
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
Listen, those spine plates had a very important function, it protected them from rogue barrels. They as a culture learned a lesson long ago that an isolated Klingon like Worf had to learn the hard way.
STO has mad me come around half way on the Klingons, but what they did really can't be reconciled with the show.
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
Listen, those spine plates had a very important function, it protected them from rogue barrels. They as a culture learned a lesson long ago that an isolated Klingon like Worf had to learn the hard way.
The Qo'nos Drop Barrel is a myth.
Myth? Or deadliest predator known to Klingon history?
STO has mad me come around half way on the Klingons, but what they did really can't be reconciled with the show.
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
Listen, those spine plates had a very important function, it protected them from rogue barrels. They as a culture learned a lesson long ago that an isolated Klingon like Worf had to learn the hard way.
The Qo'nos Drop Barrel is a myth.
Myth? Or deadliest predator known to Klingon history?
The redesign of the Klingons is endemic of a habit in Discovery to massively overdesign characters. Their justification before the show came out was something along the lines of "Well the Klingons have been redesigned before" which is true, they changed their look between the Original Series and the Motion Picture. Every change between then and TNG was a refinement of that basic design, which was an iconic look, Klingons have great big forehead ridges and long dark hair, but the majority of the actor's face is left untouched so they can act. Then Discovery comes along and buries their actors in 20 pounds of latex, stuffs massive false teeth in their mouths and makes the actors read out their lines in Klingon to be subtitled later. Plus they made them all bald, then retconned that in season 2 as Klingons shaving their hair when they go to war, and apparently grow out a good foot of hair in the, at most, couple months between the season 1 finale and start of season 2. They did similar going and redesigning the Andorians, giving them massive cheek spikes, just in case we didn't realise the bright blue guys with antennae were aliens. Or the Tellarite we see in one episode, Enterprise did a wonderful job of updating the rather primitive mask from TOS, but Discovery comes along and decides to give them tusks that would make an Ork blush.
That plus a desire to put their budget on screen as much as possible, the bridge doesn't have a little viewscreen normally kept out of shot, it has a massive window filled with HUD effects, the consoles are enormous fully animated and fill every wall, communications aren't via viewscreen, there's holoprojectors all over the ship. Time and again they keep doing tons of expensive effects work (a lot of it of tech that's anachronistic to the time period the show's supposed to be set in) and it just makes me thing, if they could go for a few less massive CGI space battles, could they find it in their budget to add another episode or two? The plot of the show moves at a breakneck pace, and because they have so few episodes, everything in each episode has to be about the plot, with no time for character work. We're 2 seasons in and I think I could name maybe 3 of the bridge crew without looking them up, and one of them's Miriam, who they killed in the one episode they spent developing her character.
Apart from wanting to make Michael Spock's super secret sister, I have no idea why they decided to set the show in the TOS era. They evidently didn't want to stick with the aesthetics of that time period, wanting technology far more advanced than even the TNG time period. It wouldn't have been hard to tweak the basic plot to make the Klingons a previously undiscovered war like alien race, since about the only thing Disco Klingons have in common with original brand is talking about Kahless, and for some reason Discovery even has them change that to Kahlesh to I guess sound more alien.
LJDouglas on
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
The redesign of the Klingons is endemic of a habit in Discovery to massively overdesign characters. Their justification before the show came out was something along the lines of "Well the Klingons have been redesigned before" which is true, they changed their look between the Original Series and the Motion Picture. Every change between then and TNG was a refinement of that basic design, which was an iconic look, Klingons have great big forehead ridges and long dark hair, but the majority of the actor's face is left untouched so they can act. Then Discovery comes along and buries their actors in 20 pounds of latex, stuffs massive false teeth in their mouths and makes the actors read out their lines in Klingon to be subtitles later. Plus they made them all bald, then retconned that in season 2 as Klingons shaving their hair when they go to war, and apparently grow out a good foot of hair in the, at most, couple months between the season 1 finale and start of season 2. They did similar going and redesigning the Andorians, giving them massive cheek spikes, just in case we didn't realise the bright blue guys with antennae were aliens. Or the Tellarite we see in one episode, Enterprise did a wonderful job of updating the rather primitive mask from TOS, but Discovery comes along and decides to give them tusks that would make an Ork blush.
That plus a desire to put their budget on screen as much as possible, the bridge doesn't have a little viewscreen normally kept out of shot, it has a massive window filled with HUD effects, the consoles are enormous fully animated and fill every wall, communications aren't via viewscreen, there's holoprojectors all over the ship. Time and again they keep doing tons of expensive effects work (a lot of it of tech that's anachronistic to the time period the show's supposed to be set in) and it just makes me thing, if they could go for a few less massive CGI space battles, could they find it in their budget to add another episode or two? The plot of the show moves at a breakneck pace, and because they have so few episodes, everything in each episode has to be about the plot, with no time for character work. We're 2 seasons in and I think I could name maybe 3 of the bridge crew without looking them up, and one of them's Miriam, who they killed in the one episode they spent developing her character.
Apart from wanting to make Michael Spock's super secret sister, I have no idea why they decided to set the show in the TOS era. They evidently didn't want to stick with the aesthetics of that time period, wanting technology far more advanced than even the TNG time period. It wouldn't have been hard to tweak the basic plot to make the Klingons a previously undiscovered war like alien race, since about the only thing Disco Klingons have in common with original brand is talking about Kahless, and for some reason Discovery even has them change that to Kahlesh to I guess sound more alien.
The thing that gets me about the Discovery Klingon redesign is that I can’t see Troi and Dax wanting to bone Worf if he looked like that instead of what we got in TNG / DS9.
Well, okay, maybe Dax since she offscreen dated a dude with a see-through skull...
Crafted by the Discovery designers? That seems like twice the horror. And again, don’t see Deanna being into give how bland all of her other dates were.
Crafted by the Discovery designers? That seems like twice the horror. And again, don’t see Deanna being into give how bland all of her other dates were.
Crafted by the Discovery designers? That seems like twice the horror. And again, don’t see Deanna being into give how bland all of her other dates were.
Crafted by the Discovery designers? That seems like twice the horror. And again, don’t see Deanna being into give how bland all of her other dates were.
I love how even people new to the show not hate watching it with others, not feeding on negative discourse week by week, etc, have all the same complaints months later lol. Clearly shows that Picard had some major problems
I think across the board, even the most ardent Picard super fans have admitted the show had a litany of problems and buckets of missed opportunities. I think it will age fairly well in greater Trek universe, but will ultimately be concluded to have been a victim of being underfunded from the get go, causing an abbreviated episode count and a pernicious sense of cheapness to pervade most of the scenes, which put a spotlight on the writing problems.
Those of us that liked it pointed out it's season 1 of a Star Trek show, which means of course it's not 100% there yet. It'll be one or two seasons until it "grows the beard."
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I love how even people new to the show not hate watching it with others, not feeding on negative discourse week by week, etc, have all the same complaints months later lol. Clearly shows that Picard had some major problems
I think across the board, even the most ardent Picard super fans have admitted the show had a litany of problems and buckets of missed opportunities. I think it will age fairly well in greater Trek universe, but will ultimately be concluded to have been a victim of being underfunded from the get go, causing an abbreviated episode count and a pernicious sense of cheapness to pervade most of the scenes, which put a spotlight on the writing problems.
Those of us that liked it pointed out it's season 1 of a Star Trek show, which means of course it's not 100% there yet. It'll be one or two seasons until it "grows the beard."
That's by the old rules. You think they'll let it have that many? without trying to just paste beards on everyone and say LOOK WE'RE MATURE NOW ALSO EVERYTHING IS IN PERIL AGAIN
If you think the good parts of Kurtzman Trek outweigh the bad enough for you to keep watching, I'm not going to argue with you. But all three seasons we have gotten have the exact same problems. They're not going to fix them because they think the seasons they're making don't have problems. 90s Trek learned and grew because they were being made with a different philosophy.
That trailer makes it pretty clear the next seasons going to have the problem again, too, struggling to one up the last one. Everything is a crisis of such incomprehensible scale that eventually none of it really is anymore.
If you think the good parts of Kurtzman Trek outweigh the bad enough for you to keep watching, I'm not going to argue with you. But all three seasons we have gotten have the exact same problems. They're not going to fix them because they think the seasons they're making don't have problems. 90s Trek learned and grew because they were being made with a different philosophy.
Well I'm not talking specifically Discovery, I haven't been interested enough to watch any episodes of that one. I do think Picard is at its heart a good show, though, and I think additional seasons will mature it. And if not, I still enjoy seeing PatStew and Jeri Ryan and (soon!) Whoopi Goldberg portraying characters I know and love.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I love how even people new to the show not hate watching it with others, not feeding on negative discourse week by week, etc, have all the same complaints months later lol. Clearly shows that Picard had some major problems
I think across the board, even the most ardent Picard super fans have admitted the show had a litany of problems and buckets of missed opportunities. I think it will age fairly well in greater Trek universe, but will ultimately be concluded to have been a victim of being underfunded from the get go, causing an abbreviated episode count and a pernicious sense of cheapness to pervade most of the scenes, which put a spotlight on the writing problems.
Having just recently watched Picard I don't think the episode count was really a problem so much as that the central conflict didn't make a whole ton of sense
I'd much rather have had it deal more thoroughly with the Federation and Romulans trying to figure out what to do after the collapse of the Romulan Empire
If you think the good parts of Kurtzman Trek outweigh the bad enough for you to keep watching, I'm not going to argue with you. But all three seasons we have gotten have the exact same problems. They're not going to fix them because they think the seasons they're making don't have problems. 90s Trek learned and grew because they were being made with a different philosophy.
Well I'm not talking specifically Discovery, I haven't been interested enough to watch any episodes of that one. I do think Picard is at its heart a good show, though, and I think additional seasons will mature it. And if not, I still enjoy seeing PatStew and Jeri Ryan and (soon!) Whoopi Goldberg portraying characters I know and love.
The problem with Picard in the end is everything to do with the kind of show it's trying to be though imo. Unless they learn to, like, dial it back a few notches I don't think it's gonna fix itself.
GO GO GO RUSH RUSH RUSH SOMETHING BIG AND SHOCKING WILL HAPPEN IN EVERY EPISODE* ENJOY THE CONSTANT SPECTACLE OH GOD PLEASE DON'T CHANGE THE CHANNEL OR UNSUBSCRIBE PLEASE PLEEEEEASE
* it will not actually be big or shocking, or even very memorable, because you don't really know any of these people and all of the stars have contracts that mean they'll be back somehow
I love how even people new to the show not hate watching it with others, not feeding on negative discourse week by week, etc, have all the same complaints months later lol. Clearly shows that Picard had some major problems
I think across the board, even the most ardent Picard super fans have admitted the show had a litany of problems and buckets of missed opportunities. I think it will age fairly well in greater Trek universe, but will ultimately be concluded to have been a victim of being underfunded from the get go, causing an abbreviated episode count and a pernicious sense of cheapness to pervade most of the scenes, which put a spotlight on the writing problems.
Having just recently watched Picard I don't think the episode count was really a problem so much as that the central conflict didn't make a whole ton of sense
I'd much rather have had it deal more thoroughly with the Federation and Romulans trying to figure out what to do after the collapse of the Romulan Empire
It goes in with two ideas and just kinda smushes them together in a really unsatisfying way that really doesn't deal well with either one.
GO GO GO RUSH RUSH RUSH SOMETHING BIG AND SHOCKING WILL HAPPEN IN EVERY EPISODE* ENJOY THE CONSTANT SPECTACLE OH GOD PLEASE DON'T CHANGE THE CHANNEL OR UNSUBSCRIBE PLEASE PLEEEEEASE
* it will not actually be big or shocking, or even very memorable, because you don't really know any of these people and all of the stars have contracts that mean they'll be back somehow
You might make that argument for Disco, but not Picard. Come on. It was, mostly, a very contemplative season in tone. The those last two episodes do ramp it up to eleven.
Anecdotally, Picard is divisive in our house; I think the earlier episodes are lo-fi character studies and draw you into the world, and the Mrs thinks they were unconscionably dull and kept asking when things would happen.
We both enjoy Disco, but I suspect we enjoy different parts of it. Except Tilly, who we both agree is fab.
Depends on the overall viewership though, doesn’t it. If people like it enough to pay for it, it’s what we’re getting. Nobody’s making 24-episode soap drama like B5 or DS9 any more, or multi-episode serials like Baker-era Doctor Who, because what people want and how they consume media has changed, and the industry has had to adapt or die.
If the ratings for Picard and Disco were crap, I wouldn’t expect them to be spinning up new seasons - but they are, so *somewhere* is an audience who loves them, and even as a cranky grognard, that pleases me. Your trek is not my trek. Their trek is not my trek. That’s cool. IDIC.
If you think the good parts of Kurtzman Trek outweigh the bad enough for you to keep watching, I'm not going to argue with you. But all three seasons we have gotten have the exact same problems. They're not going to fix them because they think the seasons they're making don't have problems. 90s Trek learned and grew because they were being made with a different philosophy.
Well I'm not talking specifically Discovery, I haven't been interested enough to watch any episodes of that one. I do think Picard is at its heart a good show, though, and I think additional seasons will mature it. And if not, I still enjoy seeing PatStew and Jeri Ryan and (soon!) Whoopi Goldberg portraying characters I know and love.
The problem with Picard in the end is everything to do with the kind of show it's trying to be though imo. Unless they learn to, like, dial it back a few notches I don't think it's gonna fix itself.
Remember that most of Picard was pretty dialed back, it didn't go off the rails until like the last three episodes.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
If you think the good parts of Kurtzman Trek outweigh the bad enough for you to keep watching, I'm not going to argue with you. But all three seasons we have gotten have the exact same problems. They're not going to fix them because they think the seasons they're making don't have problems. 90s Trek learned and grew because they were being made with a different philosophy.
Well I'm not talking specifically Discovery, I haven't been interested enough to watch any episodes of that one. I do think Picard is at its heart a good show, though, and I think additional seasons will mature it. And if not, I still enjoy seeing PatStew and Jeri Ryan and (soon!) Whoopi Goldberg portraying characters I know and love.
The problem with Picard in the end is everything to do with the kind of show it's trying to be though imo. Unless they learn to, like, dial it back a few notches I don't think it's gonna fix itself.
Remember that most of Picard was pretty dialed back, it didn't go off the rails until like the last three episodes.
Only kinda. Right from the start (or the second episode maybe, they all bleed together) with the romulan ... whatever organization they are already trying to one up every previous Star Trek. It's also got this whole action scene stuff right from the word go to try and make sure we don't get bored or something because it doesn't trust us to actually be interested in the plot or characters otherwise. The show in the end had no interest in telling smaller stories or not trying to relax imo.
Like, it's got:
doctor lady murdering that guy in cold blood at the halfway point because it's gotta kick the table over and make you wanna come back next week
only half way through the show.
Shit goes off the rails in the last few episodes in an even bigger way but it's the style of the show from the start.
GO GO GO RUSH RUSH RUSH SOMETHING BIG AND SHOCKING WILL HAPPEN IN EVERY EPISODE* ENJOY THE CONSTANT SPECTACLE OH GOD PLEASE DON'T CHANGE THE CHANNEL OR UNSUBSCRIBE PLEASE PLEEEEEASE
* it will not actually be big or shocking, or even very memorable, because you don't really know any of these people and all of the stars have contracts that mean they'll be back somehow
You might make that argument for Disco, but not Picard. Come on. It was, mostly, a very contemplative season in tone. The those last two episodes do ramp it up to eleven.
Anecdotally, Picard is divisive in our house; I think the earlier episodes are lo-fi character studies and draw you into the world, and the Mrs thinks they were unconscionably dull and kept asking when things would happen.
We both enjoy Disco, but I suspect we enjoy different parts of it. Except Tilly, who we both agree is fab.
Depends on the overall viewership though, doesn’t it. If people like it enough to pay for it, it’s what we’re getting. Nobody’s making 24-episode soap drama like B5 or DS9 any more, or multi-episode serials like Baker-era Doctor Who, because what people want and how they consume media has changed, and the industry has had to adapt or die.
If the ratings for Picard and Disco were crap, I wouldn’t expect them to be spinning up new seasons - but they are, so *somewhere* is an audience who loves them, and even as a cranky grognard, that pleases me. Your trek is not my trek. Their trek is not my trek. That’s cool. IDIC.
They actually are. They just aren't doing it on streaming services.
GO GO GO RUSH RUSH RUSH SOMETHING BIG AND SHOCKING WILL HAPPEN IN EVERY EPISODE* ENJOY THE CONSTANT SPECTACLE OH GOD PLEASE DON'T CHANGE THE CHANNEL OR UNSUBSCRIBE PLEASE PLEEEEEASE
* it will not actually be big or shocking, or even very memorable, because you don't really know any of these people and all of the stars have contracts that mean they'll be back somehow
You might make that argument for Disco, but not Picard. Come on. It was, mostly, a very contemplative season in tone. The those last two episodes do ramp it up to eleven.
Yes, and that IMO is the problem. A show with great promise, that was sold on that promise, abruptly and jarringly changes tone and pace in the middle (or last third) and goes all in on the things that it had been mostly avoiding up to that point. To its great detriment, still IMO, and my great and enduring disappointment.
Anecdotally, Picard is divisive in our house; I think the earlier episodes are lo-fi character studies and draw you into the world, and the Mrs thinks they were unconscionably dull and kept asking when things would happen.
We both enjoy Disco, but I suspect we enjoy different parts of it. Except Tilly, who we both agree is fab.
Depends on the overall viewership though, doesn’t it. If people like it enough to pay for it, it’s what we’re getting. Nobody’s making 24-episode soap drama like B5 or DS9 any more, or multi-episode serials like Baker-era Doctor Who, because what people want and how they consume media has changed, and the industry has had to adapt or die.
If the ratings for Picard and Disco were crap, I wouldn’t expect them to be spinning up new seasons - but they are, so *somewhere* is an audience who loves them, and even as a cranky grognard, that pleases me. Your trek is not my trek. Their trek is not my trek. That’s cool. IDIC.
And that is why I tend to doubt, or even despair, that I will see anything I like get made, or succeed, under the current access model / media zeitgeist / fiscal realities etc etc. Forget talk of certain works (e.g. Blazing Saddles) not being able to be made today because of changing values or "politically incorrect" humor; this is the real reason - money, pure and simple.
Maybe Strange New Worlds will be different; maybe it will avoid the pitfalls and demands we've seen the other shows succumb to. But then, I thought (and hoped) the same of Picard once.
"Is it possible that we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness? Would that constitute... a joke?"
Nimoy was 60 when he spoke those lines in The Undiscovered Country. Ten years before, when the franchise first grappled with age and mortality, when Kirk had a birthday party that McCoy bitterly compared to a funeral, he and Shatner were both 50... the same age I am now.
Expanse and Orville and Game of Thrones Seasons 1-6 prove that people like contemplative, character driven genre shows
I feel like the non stop attempts at turning literally everything into some percentage of a Transformers movie (film, tv, and games) are just ruining the chance of having a zealous and steady audience in their futile attempts to get 40 million fans because haha phasers go pew
You don't even need a massive budget to have a genre show that people are still watching 30 years from now
Expanse and Orville and Game of Thrones Seasons 1-6 prove that people like contemplative, character driven genre shows
I feel like the non stop attempts at turning literally everything into some percentage of a Transformers movie (film, tv, and games) are just ruining the chance of having a zealous and steady audience in their futile attempts to get 40 million fans because haha phasers go pew
You don't even need a massive budget to have a genre show that people are still watching 30 years from now
Not a massive budget, but Star Trek does demand cast, sets, and special effects, which does require the viewership numbers to justify that investment. That being said, it looks like Picard costs $8-$9 million/episode, while Enterprise cost $1.7 million/episode. ($2.5 million adjusted for inflation. DS9 and TNG are similar.) Orville cost $7 million/episode, and Discovery cost $8 million/episode. That disconnect in budget feels meaningful, but I'm not sure what it means. It could mean that producing significantly cheaper shows is possible, or it could mean that producing for razor-sharp 1080p displays is more expensive, or it could mean that producing more episodes allows you to defray set and model design costs over more episodes.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited September 2020
HD is part of the problem. Sets/props/costumes/makeup/CGI all have to be done to an insanely stringent standard now, massively inflating costs for a very dubious benefit. This is part of the reason I find the quest for ever-more Ks to be really shortsighted and dumb.
I know what you mean when you say there's a cost demand for CG/makeup/sets, and it is true. Yet bitterly ironic when some of the best Trek out there is little more than 2 people in a room talking to each other.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I know what you mean when you say there's a cost demand for CG/makeup/sets, and it is true. Yet bitterly ironic when some of the best Trek out there is little more than 2 people in a room talking to each other.
Finished Picard last night. Could've been better, could've been worse, but I liked how it placed talking and giving agency and choices above shooty bang bang at the end. It often felt like something that wasn't Star Trek at all, with a bickering and broken crew, but I dunno if I'd have enjoyed something that was hammering my nostalgia button like a whack a mole.
I think I preferred it to the constant emotional incontinence of Discovery. I'm also watching Voyager right now on maybe my third attempt to get through it and claim my long service badge, and it's better than that. Although I seem to have hit a reasonable patch of episodes at the end of season 2.
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The Qo'nos Drop Barrel is a myth.
Myth? Or deadliest predator known to Klingon history?
a remnant of the great Duan'Kikong wars
That plus a desire to put their budget on screen as much as possible, the bridge doesn't have a little viewscreen normally kept out of shot, it has a massive window filled with HUD effects, the consoles are enormous fully animated and fill every wall, communications aren't via viewscreen, there's holoprojectors all over the ship. Time and again they keep doing tons of expensive effects work (a lot of it of tech that's anachronistic to the time period the show's supposed to be set in) and it just makes me thing, if they could go for a few less massive CGI space battles, could they find it in their budget to add another episode or two? The plot of the show moves at a breakneck pace, and because they have so few episodes, everything in each episode has to be about the plot, with no time for character work. We're 2 seasons in and I think I could name maybe 3 of the bridge crew without looking them up, and one of them's Miriam, who they killed in the one episode they spent developing her character.
Apart from wanting to make Michael Spock's super secret sister, I have no idea why they decided to set the show in the TOS era. They evidently didn't want to stick with the aesthetics of that time period, wanting technology far more advanced than even the TNG time period. It wouldn't have been hard to tweak the basic plot to make the Klingons a previously undiscovered war like alien race, since about the only thing Disco Klingons have in common with original brand is talking about Kahless, and for some reason Discovery even has them change that to Kahlesh to I guess sound more alien.
The thing that gets me about the Discovery Klingon redesign is that I can’t see Troi and Dax wanting to bone Worf if he looked like that instead of what we got in TNG / DS9.
Well, okay, maybe Dax since she offscreen dated a dude with a see-through skull...
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
Crafted by the Discovery designers? That seems like twice the horror. And again, don’t see Deanna being into give how bland all of her other dates were.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
well i mean she was growing older
https://youtu.be/1VgypnDsAaM
Look, you hit three or four hundred years of experience, you see if you don't try to branch out a little bit too.
but then would anyone watch it?
Sounds like she was more interested in branching in, nudge nudge wink wink.
I'm not sure, it would certainly have a smaller initial viewership. I feel like if it was good, yeah
I'm thinking it might be better if it wasn't constrained but maybe not
I uh... I got some bad news for ya.
Man, you just gotta love Frakes' grin getting bigger and bigger in the second part of that clip.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
holy shit I never noticed that before.
I'm dying
Those of us that liked it pointed out it's season 1 of a Star Trek show, which means of course it's not 100% there yet. It'll be one or two seasons until it "grows the beard."
That's by the old rules. You think they'll let it have that many? without trying to just paste beards on everyone and say LOOK WE'RE MATURE NOW ALSO EVERYTHING IS IN PERIL AGAIN
Well I'm not talking specifically Discovery, I haven't been interested enough to watch any episodes of that one. I do think Picard is at its heart a good show, though, and I think additional seasons will mature it. And if not, I still enjoy seeing PatStew and Jeri Ryan and (soon!) Whoopi Goldberg portraying characters I know and love.
Having just recently watched Picard I don't think the episode count was really a problem so much as that the central conflict didn't make a whole ton of sense
I'd much rather have had it deal more thoroughly with the Federation and Romulans trying to figure out what to do after the collapse of the Romulan Empire
The problem with Picard in the end is everything to do with the kind of show it's trying to be though imo. Unless they learn to, like, dial it back a few notches I don't think it's gonna fix itself.
* it will not actually be big or shocking, or even very memorable, because you don't really know any of these people and all of the stars have contracts that mean they'll be back somehow
It goes in with two ideas and just kinda smushes them together in a really unsatisfying way that really doesn't deal well with either one.
You might make that argument for Disco, but not Picard. Come on. It was, mostly, a very contemplative season in tone. The those last two episodes do ramp it up to eleven.
Anecdotally, Picard is divisive in our house; I think the earlier episodes are lo-fi character studies and draw you into the world, and the Mrs thinks they were unconscionably dull and kept asking when things would happen.
We both enjoy Disco, but I suspect we enjoy different parts of it. Except Tilly, who we both agree is fab.
Depends on the overall viewership though, doesn’t it. If people like it enough to pay for it, it’s what we’re getting. Nobody’s making 24-episode soap drama like B5 or DS9 any more, or multi-episode serials like Baker-era Doctor Who, because what people want and how they consume media has changed, and the industry has had to adapt or die.
If the ratings for Picard and Disco were crap, I wouldn’t expect them to be spinning up new seasons - but they are, so *somewhere* is an audience who loves them, and even as a cranky grognard, that pleases me. Your trek is not my trek. Their trek is not my trek. That’s cool. IDIC.
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SF&F Reviews blog
Remember that most of Picard was pretty dialed back, it didn't go off the rails until like the last three episodes.
Only kinda. Right from the start (or the second episode maybe, they all bleed together) with the romulan ... whatever organization they are already trying to one up every previous Star Trek. It's also got this whole action scene stuff right from the word go to try and make sure we don't get bored or something because it doesn't trust us to actually be interested in the plot or characters otherwise. The show in the end had no interest in telling smaller stories or not trying to relax imo.
Like, it's got:
Shit goes off the rails in the last few episodes in an even bigger way but it's the style of the show from the start.
They actually are. They just aren't doing it on streaming services.
Yes, and that IMO is the problem. A show with great promise, that was sold on that promise, abruptly and jarringly changes tone and pace in the middle (or last third) and goes all in on the things that it had been mostly avoiding up to that point. To its great detriment, still IMO, and my great and enduring disappointment.
And that is why I tend to doubt, or even despair, that I will see anything I like get made, or succeed, under the current access model / media zeitgeist / fiscal realities etc etc. Forget talk of certain works (e.g. Blazing Saddles) not being able to be made today because of changing values or "politically incorrect" humor; this is the real reason - money, pure and simple.
Maybe Strange New Worlds will be different; maybe it will avoid the pitfalls and demands we've seen the other shows succumb to. But then, I thought (and hoped) the same of Picard once.
"Is it possible that we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness? Would that constitute... a joke?"
Nimoy was 60 when he spoke those lines in The Undiscovered Country. Ten years before, when the franchise first grappled with age and mortality, when Kirk had a birthday party that McCoy bitterly compared to a funeral, he and Shatner were both 50... the same age I am now.
I feel like the non stop attempts at turning literally everything into some percentage of a Transformers movie (film, tv, and games) are just ruining the chance of having a zealous and steady audience in their futile attempts to get 40 million fans because haha phasers go pew
You don't even need a massive budget to have a genre show that people are still watching 30 years from now
Not a massive budget, but Star Trek does demand cast, sets, and special effects, which does require the viewership numbers to justify that investment. That being said, it looks like Picard costs $8-$9 million/episode, while Enterprise cost $1.7 million/episode. ($2.5 million adjusted for inflation. DS9 and TNG are similar.) Orville cost $7 million/episode, and Discovery cost $8 million/episode. That disconnect in budget feels meaningful, but I'm not sure what it means. It could mean that producing significantly cheaper shows is possible, or it could mean that producing for razor-sharp 1080p displays is more expensive, or it could mean that producing more episodes allows you to defray set and model design costs over more episodes.
and sometimes 3-5 lights.
I think I preferred it to the constant emotional incontinence of Discovery. I'm also watching Voyager right now on maybe my third attempt to get through it and claim my long service badge, and it's better than that. Although I seem to have hit a reasonable patch of episodes at the end of season 2.
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